microRNA – New Kid On The Block Has Journalistic Baggage

“Duke University researchers used molecules called microRNAs to convert scar tissue (called fibroblasts) into heart muscle cells in a living mouse”

That’s great! Unfortunately, the author of the article foolishly decided to pit “microRNA – The New Kid On The Block” against the decade long reigning champ, Adult Stem Cells…and he needs to get his story straight.

New Kids On The Block

From the start, the author presents almost no accurate information about adult stem cells, their decade of history, successes, studies, trials, patients treated, safety, efficacy and potency.  He is incredibly dated on the understanding of adult stem cells and straight up wrong/ignorant on many of his points.  His original 3 point comparison is to Embryonic stem cells, already shown to be far inferior to Adult Stem Cells in every way including their potency.  He then states Adult Stem Cells have: “…a limited capacity to form other types of cells” which is completely wrong. 

He then quotes the Duke University doctor, ‘The results of using these adult stem cells for tissue regeneration are “not as satisfying as one would like.” 

• A. “not as satisfying as one would like.” is perhaps the most unscientific assessment I’ve ever heard 
• B.  I’m surprised to hear this from the doctor as Duke University has had tremendous success utilizing stem cells in treating pediatric Cerebral Palsy/Ataxia 
• C.  Would he be satisfied if there was a decade long history of cardiac tissue regeneration studies?  There is: http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/heart-disease-treatment/
• D.  Would he be satisfied if you could grow an entire heart from scratch, from a patients’ own stem cells?  You can.

 

I suppose the author is not entirely to blame as the assertion within the peer reviewed article is completely erroneous as well: “this is the first report of direct cardiac reprogramming in vivo.”  Wrong!

I would further question whether microRNA cells are “smart” like adult stem cells are.  Gene therapy to turn heart muscle scar tissue into heart muscle is great but then you have a scar shaped piece of heart muscle.  Does it beat in perfect time with the rest of the heart muscle or is it asynchronous?  Can it grow an entirely new heart from scratch as adult stem cells can? (No, it can not)

An adult stem cell grows a cardiac cell from it’s proverbial birth and the cardiac cells conform from ‘birth’ and as they develop to the surrounding tissue and work in unison with the adjacent cells.  It would appear the microRNA transforms the scar tissue at a later stage of the cells growth.  This is then perhaps an “older cell” with it’s own inherent programming and limitations. Prone to it’s own agenda, these doppelganger heart cells may cause conflicts with the existing cells and the rest of the heart muscle.

Just changing scar to muscle is only a fraction of what stem cells can do.  “Smart” adult stem cells will build the cells needed, put them in the places they are needed, create valves where valves are needed, capillaries if those are needed, bring dead heart tissue back to life and then some will migrate down to the pancreas and heal that as well.

microRNA gene therapy may have a long future of success and I am sure there are some applications which they will be great.  To compare them to adult stem cells in the context of regenerative medicine as the author has done, especially without a proper understanding of the safety and efficacy record of adult stem cells, especially in the field of cardiac regenerative medicine which has a decade long history (the longest of all practical and clinical research), is like bringing a rubber knife to a gun fight.

Repairing the heart without using stem cells

By Alex Crees Published April 27, 2012 FoxNews.com

• 

When a person suffers a heart attack, scar tissue forms over the damaged areas of the heart, reducing the organ’s function.  However, in a recent study, scientists successfully turned this scar tissue into working heart muscle without the use of stem cells.

Duke University researchers used molecules called microRNAs to convert scar tissue (called fibroblasts) into heart muscle cells in a living mouse, improving the heart’s ability to pump blood.

According to the scientists, this process is much simpler than stem cell transplants and has none of the ethical concerns, making it a potential turning point in the science of tissue regeneration.

“Right now, there’s no good evidence stem cells can do the job,” senior author Dr. Victor Dzau, a James B. Duke professor of medicine and chancellor of health affairs at Duke University, told FoxNews.com.

Scientists believe embryonic stem cells are the best to use for tissue regeneration because they are pluripotent—meaning they can become any type of cell in the body.  However, Dzau said there have not been enough experiments done to prove how functional the stem cells are in regenerating tissues and whether or not they may form deadly tumors.

Additionally, there are ethical concerns about using cells derived from a human embryo, he said.

Meanwhile, adult stem cells avoid the controversy surrounding embryonic stem cells but have a limited capacity to form other types of cells.  The results of using these adult stem cells for tissue regeneration are “not as satisfying as one would like,” Dzau said.

Rather than stem cells, the new method developed by Dzau’s team uses microRNA molecules—which typically control gene activity—and delivers them into the scar tissue that develops after a heart attack.  The microRNAs are able to reprogram, or trick, the scar tissue into becoming heart muscle again instead.

Testing is still in its early stages, but so far, the method appears to be relatively easy, and the data looks very promising, according to the researchers.

“It’s a much simplified, feasible way of causing regeneration; very easy to use as therapy,” Dzau said.  “With stem cells, you have to take them from the embryo or tissue in the body, grow them in culture, and re-inject them—and then there can be technical and biological problems.

“With microRNA, after a heart attack you can simply convert some of the fibroblasts and tell them to become the right cell type and regenerate,” he said.

The method also has the potential to treat stroke, spinal cord injuries, chronic conditions such as heart disease—and even the normal damage that can come with aging.  It can feasibly be used for any type of organ in the body, though the process of converting the cells may be different for each organ.

“Right now, our work is proof of concept,” Dzau said, adding that the method must still be tested in then larger animals, and if successful there, it can move onto human clinical trials.  “But one could think about all these things of possibilities.  Could you use it to treat the disease of aging and losing brain cells?  Can you convert other cells in the brain to working brain cells?

“It’s a significant finding because it changes the way we think about regenerating tissues,” Dzau said.  “It breaks open a whole new area.”

The study was funded in part by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and published Thursday in the journal Circulation Research.

NEW STEM CELL FOUND IN THE BRAIN

Researchers at Lund University have discovered a new stem cell in the adult brain. These cells can proliferate and form several different cell types – most importantly, they can form new brain cells. Now the researchers hope to put the discovery to use to develop methods that can repair diseases and injury to the brain.

Analysing brain tissue from biopsies, the researchers for the first time found stem cells located around small blood vessels in the brain. The cell’s specific function is still unclear, but its plastic properties suggest great potential. A similar cell type has been identified in several other organs where it can promote regeneration of muscle, bone, cartilage and adipose tissue.

In other organs, researchers have shown clear evidence that these types of cells contribute to repair and wound healing. Scientists suggest that the curative properties may also apply to the brain. The next step is to try to control and enhance stem cell self-healing properties with the aim of carrying out therapies targeted to a specific area of the brain.

“Our findings show that the cell capacity is much larger than we originally thought, and that these cells are very versatile,” said Gesine Paul-Visse, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Neuroscience at Lund University.

“Most interesting is their ability to form neuronal cells, but they can also be developed for other cell types. The results contribute to better understanding of how brain cell plasticity works and opens up new opportunities to exploit these very features.”

The study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, is of interest to a broad spectrum of brain research. Future possible therapeutic targets range from neurodegenerative diseases to stroke.

“We hope that our findings may lead to a new and better understanding of the brain’s own repair mechanisms,” said Dr. Paul-Visse. “Ultimately the goal is to strengthen these mechanisms and develop new treatments that can repair the diseased brain.”

###

Link to the study here:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0035577

The study:

Title: The Adult Human Brain Harbors Multipotent Perivascular Mesenchymal Stem Cells Published in: PLoS ONE, 16 April, 2012.

New stem cell found in the brain.

MAKING SENSE OF THE FDA AND STEM CELLS – WSJ OPED

By ANDREW VON ESCHENBACH-WSJ 4/15/12-See
http://online.wsj.com/articleSB10001424052702303815404577331673917964962.html?mod=googlen
ews_wsj

When I was commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from 2005 to 2009, I saw firsthand how regenerative medicine offered a cure for kidney and heart failure and other chronic conditions like diabetes. Researchers used stem cells to grow cells and tissues to replace failing organs, eliminating the need for expensive supportive treatments like dialysis and organ transplants.

But the beneficiaries were laboratory animals. Breakthroughs for humans were and still are a long way off. They have been stalled by regulatory uncertainty, because the FDA doesn’t have the scientific tools and resources to review complex innovations more expeditiously and pioneer regulatory pathways for state-of-the-art therapies that defy current agency conventions. Fortunately, Congress may have an opportunity as soon as this week to begin changing that.

The FDA isn’t obstructing progress because its employees are mean-spirited or foolish. But for decades, Congress has starved the agency of critical funding, limiting its scientists’ ability to keep up with peers in private industry and academia. The result is an agency in which science-based regulation often lags far behind scientific discovery. This forces the FDA to slow the approval of new treatments—and at times
creates acrimonious litigation between the FDA and innovators, not to mention disillusionment among desperate patients.

For example, in August 2010, the FDA filed suit against a company called Regenerative Sciences. Three years earlier, the company had begun marketing a process it called Regenexx to repair damaged joints by injecting them with a patient’s own stem cells. The FDA alleged that the cells the firm used had been manipulated to the point that they should be regulated as drugs. A resulting court injunction halting use of the technique has cast a pall over the future of regenerative medicine.

From the agency’s perspective, it had only called a “time out” until it could apply its regulatory process designed to analyze the therapy’s effectiveness and potential risks. For the industry, however, government had intervened in a way that seemed to bar the established clinical practice of using an individual’s own cells to advance the healing process.

Lawyers—many lawyers—are now trying to resolve this dispute. But at a time when science and technology are creating marvelous medical breakthroughs, the FDA should be leading and guiding the development of state-of-the-art therapies like regenerative medicine. Instead, the agency’s process for regulating complex new technologies often starts too late, after companies and researchers have sunk millions of dollars and thousands of hours into painstaking research.

It makes far better sense for the FDA to work collaboratively with physicians, patients, companies and academic researchers to craft standards for evaluating new technologies while they are still being developed, not years later when a company makes a marketing application for a breakthrough product.

Until that time, FDA scientists typically have little contact with the scientists who know the most about these innovative technologies.

This is not because they don’t want to. But consumer groups distrustful of industry have led Congress to erect ever greater barriers between regulators and those they regulate. The FDA can convene advisory committees of outside experts, but these experts weigh in only at the end of the regulatory process.

Worse, congressionally mandated conflict-of-interest rules keep many of the most knowledgeable academic and industry scientists off advisory committees out of fear that industry ties might bias their judgment.

Meanwhile, budget constraints have eroded the agency’s scientific foundations. When I moved from director of the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to become FDA commissioner in 2005, I was surprised to learn there are no provisions for continuous education to acquire new skills in emerging fields such as stem-cell biology, nanotechnology or computational biology. Even sending agency staff to academic conferences provoked a congressional outcry over meeting and travel costs.

If we want the FDA to lead innovation, and not lag behind it, Congress must give the agency the resources to be the world’s foremost science-based regulatory agency. It should endorse formal career development programs and encourage more collaboration with scientists in academia, industry, NIH and other federal agencies.

Congress should also make conflict-of-interest restrictions more rational, to ensure that agency staff can get early access to external scientific expertise to evaluate emerging technologies. The FDA should be able to make greater use of scientific consultants as “Special Government Employees” to broaden the pool of qualified and approved advisers for the agency.

FDA scientists I have encountered do care deeply about patients and want to say “yes” to safe and effective new therapies. Regulatory approval is the only bridge between miracles in the laboratory and lifesaving treatments. Yet until FDA reviewers can be scientifically confident of the benefits and risks of a new technology, their duty is to stop it—and stop it they will.

Congress has an opportunity to improve all this as it considers renewing FDA user-fee legislation this year. The temptation will be to reauthorize the fees as quickly as possible and move on as usual for another five years. This would be a grave mistake. Reforms that allow the FDA to say “yes” to innovative therapies serve all the agency’s stakeholders, including current and future patients.

Otherwise we had better get used to the agency saying no by calling “time out” or, worse, “game over” for American companies developing new, vital technologies like regenerative medicine.

Dr. von Eschenbach, a former director of the National Cancer Institute and commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration from 2006 to 2009, is chairman of the Manhattan Institute’s Project FDA.

Engineered stem cells seek out and kill HIV infection in living organisms

“…stem cells can be genetically engineered into HIV-fighting cells…”

is there anything they can’t do???

Engineered stem cells seek out and kill HIV infection in living organisms

Washington, Sun, 15 Apr 2012 ANI

Washington, Apr 15 (ANI): In a new study, scientists have expanded on previous research that had provided proof-of-principal that human stem cells can be genetically engineered into HIV-fighting cells.

This time, they have demonstrated that these cells can actually attack HIV-infected cells in a living organism.

The study by UCLA researchers demonstrate for the first time that engineering stem cells to form immune cells that target HIV is effective in suppressing the virus in living tissues in an animal model.

“We believe that this study lays the groundwork for the potential use of this type of an approach in combating HIV infection in infected individuals, in hopes of eradicating the virus from the body,” Scott G. Kitchen, lead investigator of the study, said.

In the previous research, the scientists took CD8 cytotoxic T lymphocytes – the “killer” T cells that help fight infection – from an HIV-infected individual and identified the molecule known as the T cell receptor, which guides the T cell in recognizing and killing HIV-infected cells.

However, these T cells, while able to destroy HIV-infected cells, do not exist in great enough quantities to clear the virus from the body. So the researchers cloned the receptor and used this to genetically engineer human blood stem cells.

They then placed the engineered stem cells into human thymus tissue that had been implanted in mice, allowing them to study the reaction in a living organism.

The engineered stem cells developed into a large population of mature, multi-functional HIV-specific CD8 cells that could specifically target cells containing HIV proteins.

The researchers also discovered that HIV-specific T cell receptors have to be matched to an individual in much the same way an organ is matched to a transplant patient.

In this current study, the researchers similarly engineered human blood stem cells and found that they can form mature T cells that can attack HIV in tissues where the virus resides and replicates. They did so by using a surrogate model, the humanized mouse, in which HIV infection closely resembles the disease and its progression in humans.

In a series of tests on the mice’s peripheral blood, plasma and organs conducted two weeks and six weeks after introducing the engineered cells, the researchers found that the number of CD4 “helper” T cells – which become depleted as a result of HIV infection – increased, while levels of HIV in the blood decreased.

CD4 cells are white blood cells that are an important component of the immune system, helping to fight off infections. These results indicated that the engineered cells were capable of developing and migrating to the organs to fight infection there.

The researchers did note a potential weakness with the study: Human immune cells reconstituted at a lower level in the humanized mice than they would in humans, and as a result, the mice’s immune systems were mostly, though not completely, reconstructed.

Due to this, HIV may be slower to mutate in the mice than in human hosts. So the use of multiple, engineered T cell receptors may be one way to adjust for the higher potential for HIV mutation in humans.

“We believe that this is the first step in developing a more aggressive approach in correcting the defects in the human T cell responses that allow HIV to persist in infected people,” Kitchen added.

The study has been published in the journal PLoS Pathogens. (ANI)

Engineered stem cells seek out and kill HIV infection in living organisms.

TEXAS OKs EXPERIMENTAL STEM CELL THERAPY LIMITS – questions

Please rate this article 

Texas OKs experimental stem cell therapy limits

Friday, April 14, 2012

Will this move by Texas lead to a faster process of FDA approval and insurance coverage? - Boonie

 

My gut says: baby steps. They need to define the IRB process and make sure all the pieces of the machine work well. There are many factors which will unfold now.

Will other states fall after Texas like for medical marijuana?

Will Texas stand alone and all US stem cell companies open clinics there?

Will patients go to a clinic in Texas regulated by an IRB with zero experience over a treatment center outside the US with thousands of successes?

Can the FDA approval process be changed from clinical trial to produce drugs INTO a process oriented hybrid?

Will insurance cover it…ie will the American people, many whom think all stem cells are embryonic still so all stem cells = murder, many whom don’t know about the thousands of trials and tens of thousands patients treated, want to ‘foot the bill’ for these Texas treatments?

Many many questions.

Rome. Built. Not one day.

Baby steps…but a step in the right direction.

 

Related articles:

• TEXAS OKs EXPERIMENTAL STEM CELL THERAPY LIMITS – explained April 14, 2012
  
• TEXAS OKs EXPERIMENTAL STEM CELL THERAPY LIMITS!!! April 13, 2012

• TEXAS – PERRY – STEM CELLS – NEW RULING April 13, 2012
• WHY IS THE USA SO DAMN BEHIND? HAVE A HEART April 12, 2012
• A history of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and stem cells April 11, 2012
• Stem Cell Injections in Lou Gehrig’s Disease can be Given Safely April 11, 2012
• MEDICAL BOARD’s proposed stem-cell policy under fire – Part 2 April 9, 2012
• MEDICAL BOARD Gives Early OK to Adult Stem Cell Rules – Part 1 April 9, 2012
• FDA APPROVES FIRST CORD BLOOD PRODUCT April 4, 2012
• STEM CELLS ARE BAD!!! IT’S A CON!!! CAVEAT EMPTOR!!! April 4, 2012
• DRIVING THE FDA DUNE BUGGY INTO THE STEM CELL OCEAN April 4, 2012
• FDA’s New Claim: “Your Body Is a Drug—and We Have the Authority to Regulate It!” March 21,2012
• ABORTION, EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS, CRICHTON and PHARMA March 19,2012

TEXAS OKs EXPERIMENTAL STEM CELL THERAPY LIMITS – explained

Please rate this article 

Texas OKs experimental stem cell therapy limits

Friday, April 14, 2012

What this means:

1. This is not blind distribution of medicine with no control. The legislature demands full transparency & disclosure (not available to patients in clinical trials). In trials, patients have no idea what they are getting if anything! There is no patient, only guinea pigs.

2. There is oversight control by an Institutional Review Board. There will not be rampant, unchecked treatments or “growth motivated by cash only.”

Standard FDA clinical trials regulate only how DRUGS are brought to market. Adult stem cell therapies are not drugs, they are a procedure, a process, a protocol & must be treated differently in the courts & in practice like PRPs (which are legal. 2x standard?). It was way past time to end the idea: ‘the result of all medical intervention is a prescription drug.’ “Give a small boy a hammer, & he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding,” Texas is unburdened from the yoke of those blinded by a faith in a system that demands the mandatory adherence to “one size fits all,” “one size fits drugs,” “drugs fit all.”

Adult stem cells have a proven record of safety & efficacy in studies & trials around the world – thousands of them. American medical professionals are so Ameri-centric, they throw away or ignore anything conducted outside the USA…when our health system is ranked 37th in the world. This arrogance is suspect. “We’re 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy,178 in infant mortality…” and the US throws away other country’s clinical trials & studies?  Perhaps we should throw away our entire medical system & start from scratch or at least start taking pointers from some other countries on how to improve our health care/medical system…countries who apparently do a better job at it than we do like ranked 27th to 36th: United  Arab  Emirates, Israel, Morocco, Canada, Finland, Australia, Chile, Denmark, Dominica and Costa Rica.

With our CLINICAL TRIAL system, a human patient is used as a Guinea pig & sacrificed for the patient of tomorrow, blindly & randomly given medications or not, given placebos or not or given nothing.  They are Guinea pigs by definition. There is no patient, there is no empowerment, there are no rights, there is no agenda for healing. The health of one patient is sacrificed today for the health of patients of tomorrow whom apparently have more value. Categorization of any human patient as dispensable, even in order to generate data for a drug treatment to be sold to a different patient tomorrow, is reprehensible.  Clinical trials = no agenda for healing today.

With ADULT STEM CELL TREATMENTS, a human is given a therapy today intended to heal that person today. That person. Their health, their survival, that patient is of paramount importance. Their life has value, today. Adult stem cell treatments are simply, a treatment today, paid for today, for a human today to heal today, live today and into tomorrow.

I guess you can be a Guinea Pig for future patients tomorrow or you can be an empowered patient for yourself today.  All this legislature does, is give you the choice. In the end, our choices are all we ever have.

Related articles:

• TEXAS OKs EXPERIMENTAL STEM CELL THERAPY LIMITS!!! April 13, 2012

• TEXAS – PERRY – STEM CELLS – NEW RULING April 13, 2012
• WHY IS THE USA SO DAMN BEHIND? HAVE A HEART April 12, 2012
• A history of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and stem cells April 11, 2012
• Stem Cell Injections in Lou Gehrig’s Disease can be Given Safely April 11, 2012
• MEDICAL BOARD’s proposed stem-cell policy under fire – Part 2 April 9, 2012
• MEDICAL BOARD Gives Early OK to Adult Stem Cell Rules – Part 1 April 9, 2012
• FDA APPROVES FIRST CORD BLOOD PRODUCT April 4, 2012
• STEM CELLS ARE BAD!!! IT’S A CON!!! CAVEAT EMPTOR!!! April 4, 2012
• DRIVING THE FDA DUNE BUGGY INTO THE STEM CELL OCEAN April 4, 2012
• FDA’s New Claim: “Your Body Is a Drug—and We Have the Authority to Regulate It!” March 21,2012
• ABORTION, EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS, CRICHTON and PHARMA March 19,2012

TEXAS OKs EXPERIMENTAL STEM CELL THERAPY LIMITS!!!

PERRY DID IT!!

I DON’T THINK I BELIEVE IT!!

IS IT POSSIBLE??

IS IT??

Texas OKs experimental stem cell therapy limits

National / World News 1:46 p.m. Friday, April 13, 2012

The rules require patients to give their consent and a review board must approve the procedure before using adult stem cells.

Supporters say establishing formal rules will lead to more medical innovation. Critics warned that the rules don’t provide enough protection for patients and could lead to an explosion of doctors promoting unproven, expensive treatments.

Perry had his own stem cells injected into his back.

The Food and Drug Administration hasn’t approved using adult stem cells to help people heal from surgery, but experimentation is common. Some scientists tout the possible benefits, including treatment for heart disease, diabetes and some cancers.

Texas OKs experimental stem cell therapy limits  | ajc.com.

Related articles:

• TEXAS OKs EXPERIMENTAL STEM CELL THERAPY LIMITS!!! April 13, 2012

• TEXAS – PERRY – STEM CELLS – NEW RULING April 13, 2012
• WHY IS THE USA SO DAMN BEHIND? HAVE A HEART April 12, 2012
• A history of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and stem cells April 11, 2012
• Stem Cell Injections in Lou Gehrig’s Disease can be Given Safely April 11, 2012
• MEDICAL BOARD’s proposed stem-cell policy under fire – Part 2 April 9, 2012
• MEDICAL BOARD Gives Early OK to Adult Stem Cell Rules – Part 1 April 9, 2012
• FDA APPROVES FIRST CORD BLOOD PRODUCT April 4, 2012
• STEM CELLS ARE BAD!!! IT’S A CON!!! CAVEAT EMPTOR!!! April 4, 2012
• DRIVING THE FDA DUNE BUGGY INTO THE STEM CELL OCEAN April 4, 2012
• FDA’s New Claim: “Your Body Is a Drug—and We Have the Authority to Regulate It!” March 21,2012
• ABORTION, EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS, CRICHTON and PHARMA March 19,2012

 

 

 

NEWSROOM – USA, THE GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD

What can I say about the upcoming HBO series The Newsroom from Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing and screenwriter of The Social Network and Moneyball?  June 24th.

Picasso said:

“We all know that Art is not truth.

Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth,

at least the truth that is given to us to understand.”

Sometimes though, art is the only place we find the truth.

Cord Blood Treatment May Fulfill Baseballer’s Dreams

Twenty-two-years ago, a doctor performed the first umbilical cord transplant for leukemia in the U.S. He used stem cells from a newborn’s umbilical cord and found that they could clean up leukemia cells…Ten years later, in 2000, he learned that mixing cord blood from two different babies was even more effective. Now, he’s taking it a step further.  “What makes this particularly unique is that Derrick is the first person in the world to receive this therapy,” said Wagner.

gee I hope Texas rules in favor of stem cell treatments today or all of the leukemia patients who follow this guy will be screwed.  they will have to enter a clinical trial in 6 years or so with 30% chance of receiving the cord blood, made into a drug with side effects of course…a trial which excludes anyone with anything else wrong with them (do leukemia patients ever have other sicknesses? probably not.  i seem to remember hearing a lot: “he’s healthy as an ox…except for the leukemia of course). 

so this is good news.  in 10 years or so all you leukemia patients can get a drug…made from cord blood stem cells…with a fraction of the effectiveness…and lots of negative side effects…maybe…

because the truth is, if it’s that rare, then the market sales will not be large enough to pay back the 1/2 billion required to bring the drug to market – so it will never get made anyway…and wait, 10 years?  what’s the life expectancy for  “high-risk form(s) of leukemia which [can] not be cured by chemotherapy?”  never mind readers. skip this article, this doesn’t apply to you.  you’ll all be dead by then.

I REALLY hope Texas rules in favor of stem cell treatments today

Cord Blood Treatment May Fulfill Baseballer’s Dreams

March 8, 2012 10:00 PM

VIDEO – http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/video?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=6824750

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — He was set to go to college last fall and play baseball, but leukemia changed that. Now, an 18-year-old man is part of the first-of-its-kind treatment that may allow him to fulfill his dream.

Derrick Keller is supposed to be playing baseball for Southwest Minnesota State University, not sitting in a hospital bed at University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital. But last summer, just before he was set to leave for college on a baseball scholarship, Derrick began feeling weak.

“For no reason just jogging to centerfield and back, playing catch, my muscles would get extremely tired and I wasn’t feeling myself,” said Keller.

A blood test confirmed his family’s worst fears. Keller had a high-risk form of leukemia which could not be cured by chemotherapy.

“It was unexpected. I would never expect to hear that news. I was normal and it was just weird, I guess,” said Keller.

College was no longer an option. Neither was baseball, which was probably the hardest thing for Keller. But after months in and out of the hospital, his luck was about to change.

“We were able to show that cord blood was a very effective way of curing leukemia,” said Dr. John Wagner, who believes he may be able to cure Keller.

Twenty-two-years ago, Wagner performed the first umbilical cord transplant for leukemia in the U.S. He used stem cells from a newborn’s umbilical cord and found that they could clean up leukemia cells.

Ten years later, in 2000, he learned that mixing cord blood from two different babies was even more effective. Now, with Keller, he’s taking it a step further.

“What makes this particularly unique is that Derrick is the first person in the world to receive this therapy,” said Wagner.

Wagner says Keller would receive an expanded number of stem cells, beyond anything they’ve done before. On Feb. 7, Keller received 73 times more stem cells than the average patient gets.

Wagner’s theory is that the more stem cells Keller receives, the quicker the recovery time and less hospital visits down the road. The surgery was a success and, so far, Keller looks and feels better.

“We think we should be able to cure him of leukemia where, six months from now, you had no idea he ever went through a transplant,” said Wagner.

That would make him a part of history. For Keller, the thought of going to college and being able to play the sport he loves is more thrilling than all of his home runs combined.

“It gets tough sitting here when all my friends are off at college doing that kind of stuff. As soon as I can get back to playing ball and being the normal me again, it will feel great,” said Keller.

Wagner says, if successful, this treatment could be used for both children and adults.

If Keller continues to heal as fast as he is, Wagner sees no reason he can’t go to Southwest Minnesota State in Marshall this fall, where a baseball scholarship is still waiting for him.

Cord Blood Treatment May Fulfill Baseballer’s Dreams « CBS Minnesota.

TEXAS – PERRY – STEM CELLS – NEW RULING

Today (Friday) there is a very significant legislation ruling in Texas (prompted by Gov Perry and his use of stem cells during spinal fusion surgery) which if passed will allow the use of stem cell therapy in Texas under a few conditions. How will this effect the patients and the stem cell industry?

Back story:
MEDICAL BOARD Gives Early OK to Adult Stem Cell Rules – Part 1 April 9, 2012
http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/medical-board-gives-early-ok-to-adult-stem-cell-rules/
MEDICAL BOARD’s proposed stem-cell policy under fire – Part 2 April 9, 2012
http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/medical-boards-proposed-stem-cell-policy-under-fire-part-2/
DRIVING THE FDA DUNE BUGGY INTO THE STEM CELL OCEAN http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/driving-the-fda-dune-buggy-into-the-stem-cell-ocean/

This is by no means a political message and I neither endorse nor denounce Gov Perry but I do appreciate the incredible attention he has been able to focus on the benefits of adult stem cell therapies and if this legislature goes through, thousands of patients with no hope can be help with them.